CloudWatch Pipelines Can Now Parse RDS Logs, XML, and Add GeoIP Right in the Pipeline!
Hey everyone, it's me! Today AWS dropped a quietly useful update for anyone wrangling logs, so let's dive right in.
AWS What's New
aws.amazon.com
What was announced?
AWS What's New announced three new processors for Amazon CloudWatch pipelines:
- Amazon RDS log parser
- XML parser
- GeoIP enrichment processor
CloudWatch pipelines is a fully managed service that ingests, transforms, and routes telemetry data — no infrastructure to manage on your end.
The story so far
Log sources often arrive in formats that aren't immediately queryable. Aurora logs come in their native engine format, application logs carry embedded XML, and IP addresses alone don't tell you where a request came from. Until now, you had to reprocess that data yourself before you could really use it.
What changes
The three new processors each tackle one of those pain points.
- RDS processor: parses Aurora audit and error logs into structured fields, handy for compliance reporting
- XML parser: converts an XML string field into JSON, e.g. pulling the XML payload out of a Windows Event Log
- GeoIP processor: enriches an IP address field with city, country, and coordinates, useful for security analysis
You can use them independently or combine them in a single pipeline.
Dive Deep
There's no extra charge for these processors, and they're available in every AWS Region where CloudWatch pipelines is generally available — though standard CloudWatch log ingestion and storage rates still apply. You can add them through the AWS Management Console, AWS CLI, or AWS SDKs.
Wrap-up
- Amazon CloudWatch pipelines gained three new processors: RDS log parser, XML parser, and GeoIP enrichment
- You can now structure Aurora logs, turn XML fields into JSON, and add location info to IP addresses
- No extra cost, and configurable from the Console, CLI, or SDKs
If you're the one hand-rolling log preprocessing scripts or doing security analysis on AWS, this update is for you.
